Inconsolable
by JuliennePotato
Summary: A week passed. Two. Had it really been that long? Oneshot.


Inconsolable

Author's Note: Another oneshot, written partly because I thought Holly got over the death of her mentor a little too easily in the books, and because I've been told my writing is quite emotionless, so I wanted to see whether I could actually write emotion. Feel free to tell me whether you think it's a dismal failure, a roaring success, or somewhere in-between. 

* * *

"'_Holly,' he said, holding her at arm's length. 'How have you been?'  
_'_Busy,' replied Holly.  
__Foaly frowned. 'You look a little skinny.'  
_  
- _Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony, pg 41 (UK Paperback) _"

* * *

A week passed. Two. Had it really been that long? How could the world continue marching to that cold, impersonal tune that she had always despised? It had swept her father away with it, oh so many years ago. His feet had tripped over the beat and fallen into darkness: a sombre crescendo on the cymbals culminating in a cap-in-hand officer leaving her mother sobbing into the carpet.

And now who had it taken? Why? What right did time have to stop the hands of Julius Root's clock? Turn his hourglass horizontal and lay it, carelessly, on an out-of-reach shelf where it would gather dust amongst the other forgotten things?

She had been to his memorial more times than she could count. Traced the letters etched in bronze so often she was amazed the metal had not worn away beneath her touch.

Sometimes, others were there. Trouble Kelp would often lurk in the shadows of one of the artificially planted trees, toying with an autumn leaf as he kept his head bowed.

Once or twice, she met Foaly in front of the obelisk, but they never exchanged anything but pleasantries. To do so on the Commander's - _Julius's - _memorial would be wrong. It would prove that life had continued and their banter lost its charm without their red-faced friend there to glower and rage.

Julius. The name was thrown about freely now, as though everybody had had the privilege of using his first name when he was...when he was...

It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. They never lost. Never. And even now, with Opal behind bars she had won.  
Oh, the fairy civilisation was safe. She was not discredited - quite the opposite, in fact - and Artemis was still free to track down whatever painting he became enamoured with. But as the Commander's gun slowly rusted on the rack of Foaly's weapons - weapons that were useless when it came down to it - and her feet walked through the Haven suburbs at midday, on autopilot, Opal's vicious smile invaded her head, toying with the memories of her Commander until she could not think of any happy incidents without a miniature orange sun feeding on his torso and burning the memory like a photograph with a cigarette - a fungal cigar - stubbing out the faces of the occupants.

A month passed. Two. She had set up a P.I. Firm as she had threatened to do, with Mulch by her side. He made her laugh. Not the belly-deep, face distorting laugh of old, but a brief breath of amusement that was all too soon swallowed by the all-too-real awfulness of reality.

She was corkscrewing through life, and she knew it. Barely eating, sleeping too much and still haunted by the bags that carried ready-mix packets of grief beneath her eyes. There were moments of lucidity, when the anguish let her up for air, but mostly, it felt as though she were being held underwater, drowning in her own unshed tears. She'd given up struggling a long time ago.

The television networks ran specials on her. Two, in fact. Both focusing on her maverick decision to help Artemis rather than return below ground and clear her name. They presented her in a sympathetic light, or near enough. She was shown to be an unsung hero, or so Mulch told her. She'd turned it off after the first five minutes. Neither mentioned the Commander's murder. His bravery. They had all seen the footage of his fearless smile; fearless despite the overwhelming wave of blackness that was about to engulf him, to carry him along with it, swept with the detritus but completely alone. And none of that was mentioned. It was a 'tragic murder' but nothing more was said about it. Pushed into one corner in the fervent hope that it would just disappear.

Foaly kept passing her outdated LEP equipment, and a few new inventions of his own, to give her business the edge and pull her away from the cliff-face and the choppy waters of debt that she was standing on the crumbling edge of, but she knew that the business was failing not for lack of clients, or even her own notoriety. Her heart wasn't in it. It wasn't in anything. All it did was perform the superfluous task of proving she was still alive. As if that was needed. They - the two-bit psychoanalysists she had heard spouting nonsense about grief - said that when one suffered a great loss, one felt as though a part of them had died along with the person. She begged to differ. How could a part of her have died along with Julius when she could feel every second, every breath and every thought pass by in painful stabs like children hitting at a piñata? All grief did was prove that she was alive, poking her with glee whenever she felt a lull in the discord in her head.

A job passed. Two. It was nearing the six-month anniversary and to compensate, she threw herself into whatever jobs she could find. She found the hurt was deeper now. Malignant and persistent, like a tumour she couldn't cut out, and wouldn't want to if she could. She also found herself able to go for hours at a time without the veil of sadness descending and the dull buttons that her eyes had become from clouding over. But when she was alone it ate at her. It festered in her gut, waiting to uncoil and stick its barbs at whatever patch of exposed skin it was nearest to.

She told herself she was being stupid. How disappointed Julius would be that she was stagnating out of some sick, subconscious desire to never become more than him. It didn't make it better. She moved when she was told to, like a puppet on a string, suspended in the air, longing for the day somebody came to cut the strings. For when she could fall into nothing herself and finally be free of the one emotion that some twisted God had deigned to leave to her.

There were those that tried to get her to talk. Some misguided do-gooders, some friends. She would keep her answers short, keeping her voice carefully impassive: inside she found that their attempts made it worse. Left alone, the wound across her heart could shrink and heal, until it barely twitched at the mention of her mentor, but they picked, and they _picked, _a half-hearted gesture that made them feel better, as though they had fulfilled some sort of unpleasant duty. She found they left her raw, scratched and bleeding.

They always left her bleeding.

* * *

Thoughts? And (it feels very vain to be writing this), readers of The Private Wound, I apologise for the relative slowness of the next chapter. It is coming, I promise!

Reviewers get...umm...Mulch to make them laugh?


End file.
